JONTILLMAN.COM | part of the problem since 1976

Even to the best of us, bad things happen; such as losing control of our internet accounts.

This just (as in this morning) happened to me, exactly as it did to Rebellin. My Ebay account and Gmail account were suddenly no longer under my control. I scramble to stem the tide, so to speak; changing passwords all over the place, virus scanning, calling banks, etc. The only two affected accounts seemed to be Ebay and Gmail. The two experiences couldn’t be any more different, and now I despair of ever getting my gmail account back.

Google Experience: Fill out a form that needs the URL of my invitation email (18 months ago?) that no one at the time said to keep, cross my fingers and ignore the sinking feeling.

Ebay Experience: Find their live chat, log on, get an apology for having to wait 5 minutes for someone, answer a few questions, and they send an email to reset my acct. Email never arrives, reenter chat, explain the situation and they offer to call me and give me a password, even though I’m on another continent at the moment. receive phone call, get password and boom!, all done.

Both Ebay and Google provide me with services in the hope that I will make them money; Ebay by buying and selling on their site, Google by clicking on advertisements. Ebay provides exemplary customer service, as evidenced by many people’s testimonials about similiar situations. Google, on the other hand, if the anecdotes are even remotely true, couldn’t give a shit about me and my account’s security, regardless of what they say here and here.

Lesson learned. You’d think that at a company like Google someone would understand that you don’t win by being bigger or better, you win by being nicer. Oh well, Gmail was a nice service I thought, but maybe not…